Between the Dark and the Light
by BunnyPhobia
Summary: Post 'The Girl in Question'. Wesley confronts his fears, and Illyria confronts Wesley
1. Default Chapter

Disclaimer: Not mine, not at all.

Summary: Wesley's thoughts, and Illyria's actions and a lot of chaos in between.

This is the first time I've written from Wes's P.O.V. 

New, improved and edited (teach me to write at two in the morning!). I must also add that I am British, and so any comments that Wes' language isn't 'British' enough are not going to be agreed with by me - I've tried to make Wes less stereotypical, and, of course..you ever heard of Americanisation? :) Feel free to disagree however!

Thank you!

* * *

She is destroying me.

I haven't really considered my mental state ever since she appeared. I haven't had the chance to really think about what's she done and what she's doing.

It's all gone so fast, one thing rolling into another – there was too much to do, too much at stake at first to give myself a moment of self-assessment, and see how bad it had all turned... 

Now, however…

I am the reader, the learner, the man with the pen, and its been my job, _mine_, to discover all I can, to get the details and write them down and manipulate her to our advantage.

I'm such a failure.

I kept it under control, behind a barrier of lead and steel. I saw her, she saw me, but there was a world between us, and neither particularly wanted to get any closer than necessary. Her, because I'm more than inferior…and I because…

She was - is - a creature to me, an alien, unfathomable creature who simply inhabits the body of someone I used to know. I see and I accept that, and each day I still swear, once I have learned all there is, I will put her down and end this cruel brigade. 

Yesterday, she commented to me, whilst she wandered round the laboratories as she…as Fred had done, that I often seemed to be fighting against something; something non-physical.

I explained to her that these were emotions, that it was a human thing, and gosh, hadn't I apologised enough yet? 

She ignored my sarcasm, simply sneering, and replying in her long, monotonous way that she could smell the emotions, that they fell off me in waves like leaves to the ground. I was a small, inconsequential being, as were the rest of my kind. But she could not comprehend why these emotions would contradict each other. She said that they had changed, that it hadn't been this way before, and was intrigued as to the cause.

"You hate me, as you have always done. But now you also desire me"

I had no reply; indeed, I couldn't even speak.

"You spoke before of adaptation" She commented, her fingers tracing round the edge of a flowerpot she had brought in from outside. Her nails scratched the terracotta and made the tiniest of sounds.

I stared at her, open-mouthed, feeling my stomach turn in fear and…acknowledgement.

"Is this an example of what you spoke?"

Then she had walked towards me, abandoning the tub of damp earth after first pulling from it a just-sprouting bulb. The bulb was being held tightly in her palm, and I knew she was attempting to mimic the soil. It was all about power.

"I…I am not adapting to you, Illyria" I stated coldly, trying to ignore the pounding of my heart that suggested I was lying. The pounding was too loud for her not to notice.

"You lie" She hissed, and brought the bulb up in front of my face, letting it rest on her open palm. 

"This seed…It has been pulled from what it knows, and now is confronted with something foreign and unnatural. The Light" She studied it with her ice-blue eyes, and I wondered how deep they could see. "Will it also adapt and survive? Or will it flounder and shrivel, helpless like a child?"

I stared back at her, willing myself to match her gaze.

"It was already welcoming the change, Illyria. Look at the shoots"

"Baby fragments, no match for the outside"

"It means your metaphor is flawed"

Her head tilted in question.

"Coping with change is different than searching for it…"

A flicker of something ran across her face; it could have been contempt, but I was afraid it was something else entirely.

"My kind do not have to adapt!"

"You're the only one of 'your kind' left. You might see benefit to change…to adapt to our ways, our mannerisms"

"I will not be like you!"

I thought of the gun, of the energy it had created to drain her power, of the edge she had reached, so near to destruction. So full of cracks, and winding cobwebs, and that searing blue-white light…

"I didn't say you have to be like me" I countered softly. "You simply have to redefine yourself"

She had given that the briefest thought, before dropping the bulb to the floor, and crushing it to nothing beneath her foot.


	2. Between The Dark and the Light

Disclaimer: As before, I own nothing.

* * *

Angel wants me to kill her, of course. It's ironic that a creature like him, who defied all convention, cannot believe she can do the same. A psychiatrist would have a lot to say about that.

But Angel makes me tired. I find that each conversation awakes a thousand more hidden memories, memories I stupidly awoke because I'm so damned righteous and so _so_ stupid! The weight of two lifetimes now rests on my shoulders, when I could barely carry myself upright with one.

"Don't trust her, Wesley. She's an angry ex-god, and I don't want her to play you. I cannot have that risk!"

His words now finally make sense. His worries about trust over the last year all fit into place, because what kind of man am I to steal a baby from his father without any true verification? What man blames his friends for his own losses? What man holds a grudge against another displaying pure paternal instinct? 

I may not know _my_ father as a parent, but I do know, the disappointment that I am, that he would hunt down and kill anyone who hurt me. It may be more for my mum's benefit, but the effect is still the same. I can understand everything Angel and the others did, but I cannot understand myself.

Yet, even now, I do the same as I did before. I hide. I sit in my office surrounded by books in barely comprehensible languages. I say very little and let no one into my mind.

Fred used to say that I was two different men. There was the clumsy gibbering fool, who tried hard to achieve other people's expectations: 'Mr Rogue Demon Hunter'. And then there was the quiet, unrelenting study, who invited no helpers and allowed for no failure, with expectations in the sky. 

She had said, in that brief time, that she had loved them both.

Her assessment was flawed. There aren't two versions of me, only one chaotic, antagonistic mess who has no idea where he is going, and can't choose between his heart or his head. It was most likely that mess that got her killed, because I…I'm the one who brought us to Wolfram and Hart. I started it all.

I'm the learned fool with the pen and a shotgun.


	3. Between The Dark and the Light

Disclaimer: As before, still owning nothing.

* * *

Illyria, in her odd way, is becoming a form of sanctuary. Her eyes, so old and yet new, allow a new perspective for things I know so well and no longer see. She is shocking, and blunt, and overwhelmingly analytical, but I know, despite what she says, that she does feel. And it's more than simple contempt.

She thinks that she has control, and perhaps she does, as she tugs on my heart and then rips it to shreds.

_"Wes, are you mad at me or something?"_

Oh dear god. How could she do that to me? I had thought I had it under control, that, like I bragged, I was adapting. She was meant to be an object to me, and instead had become a being, filling the void Fred left behind.

And yet, her powers to manipulate time still existed.

It was like a burning, falling sky, and I was drowning in it, because, for a moment I had thought…

My dear Fred.

Angel is right, I am controlled; she is already manipulating me. But how does a man like me, a man who exists only as a consistent failure, do battle with a god in my girlfriend's body? I can barely see straight, and I have thoughts that leap out from the walls, flying the air streams, all whirling around and dancing in a laugh because she IS Fred. But she is also Illyria, even if that is in a form she herself cannot recognise.

But I no longer know myself, yet I accept that I am Wesley.

Dear god…Such a convoluted barrage of thoughts.

She was in here, my office, merely five minutes ago. 

"Does this please you?"

My girl, my Illyria, all dressed in cold royal blue. 

"You shall never please me" I murmured from behind my desk. The books were starting to take over, and their words now filled my room like they cluttered up my mind.

"Do you find this more…satisfactory?"

I glanced up, eyes dull.

"Yes" I conceded.

Cold, blank, empty silence, and the room spun itself a thousand weaves of cotton without a Jenny raising a Foot. 

"You lie".

I almost lost my breath, and my limbs seized up as anger coursed through me. The heat was a furnace threading through my veins.

"Why would I lie?"

"You desire me as I was before"

"You are never to be like her again!" I yelled, then my voice dropped. "Or did I not make myself clear?"

"You lie, because you yourself do not understand"

I stood, breathing hard. "Why don't you explain it to me then?"

That head tilted again, and her eyes, bare of all but the facts she held to be true, threatened to overwhelm me.

"You are confused, because your feelings have changed. You have begun to adapt, and yet resist it"

"Illyria…" I warned. A thought I did not wish to have, flickered into life like candlelight, before extinguishing into a waving line of smoke.

"You like her as me, and me as her"

She couldn't say it, she wouldn't –

"You love us both"


	4. Between The Dark and the Light

Disclaimer: Nope, still nothing! All theirs, not mine.

* * *

The anger I felt for Gunn was misdirected; I acknowledge that now. It was really anger I felt for myself, except somehow, in my anguish, the scalpel missed my own gut and found his instead. 

I cannot hold events as purely his fault; I didn't from the moment I left him on the ground. He didn't know, anymore than I had. It wasn't his role to know – all his knowledge was fake and applied. _I_ was the one who should have seen what would happen! Me. 

That was my role, and I failed.

Stabbing a man is a strange experience. Of course, when it happened, I had no recollection of my previous histories, yet it felt familiar and oddly…right.

A man is fleshly, he is merely a weight of soft, permeable mass hung around a jokingly fragile skeleton. The scalpel had sunk it as if returning to the womb. The cold metal had become warm, warmer than the heat of my hand, because all my being had shrivelled into a cold, hard creature who was afraid of the light.

His eyes and his reaction said shock, but they whispered understanding, and I dug it in that much deeper, seeking peace for us both –

Gunn's pain hadn't even come close to my own, and I felt little satisfaction from the act. After all, no man truly enjoys hurting another because they know it is futile. It cannot undo the previous transgression. Stabbing Gunn did not bring Fred back, as I had known it wouldn't. I was simply following millennia of instinct. 

The Astronaut only wins if he takes off his suit.

Knox knew that, I believe.

For him, I felt little anger. Knox was different, because I understood him. My feelings for him were all rooted in fear. 

He was someone who I could have been. He saw in Fred the same things I saw and expressed it in the only way he knew how, in the way the Romans had expressed their love for their Emperors. He deified her. Truly, what more fitting way to worship the one you love than to make her a God?

Fred-Illyria. Illyria-Fred. Worshipped in the heavens, the light of all things.

My dear, beautiful Fred. I don't know why you couldn't stay


	5. Between The Dark and the Light

Disclaimer: Joss', not mine.

* * *

I stood, pen still in hand, speechless.

"I have observed your actions, and interpreted your emotions" She explained. "They all portend to this conclusion"

* * *

"Did you get what you needed from that experience?" 

"Yes, it was most informative." 

"Good, don't ever do it again." 

* * *

She had been testing me. That role-play had merely been an experiment to gauge her power. I was her puppet – she knew that more than anything else. 

And I had fallen for it like the clumsy fool I was.

"What would satisfy you?"

"What?" I managed to force my drifting gaze upon her. I had been travelling through thoughts, in worlds of grey and painful colour. I was losing my grip. 

"What d'ya want me t'be?"

Fred's voice. Fred's. Voice. There, inside her, inside the body of the God who lived in the body of the voice and this was all so confusing.

That quirky, coy smile that spread across her whole face, lighting up her eyes, dressed in blue. She was Fred, but she was Illyria.

"I told you" I said, in barely measured tones. "Be blue"

"Y'sure?"

"I told you not to do that!" I roared, flinging the pen across the room. It struck a book, a pile of books, and its flight was halted, the collision merely throwing it down to the floor, without strength or effect. I stared at it dully. It seemed the same, but had surely broken. I willed it to stand, to fly again and reach its intended target and have its intentions met -

"Aw, come on Wes…How long is this gonna take?"

Suddenly she was behind me, her arms slipping round my waist and I found I was frozen as time raced round my ears.

"It took ya long enough last time" She teasing reprimanded.

Slowly, oh so slowly, I turned around, feeling the press of her hands through my shirt, and they felt the same as they had always done.

And there she was. FredIllyria. IllyriaFred. Dressed in red, with skin of blue, smiling up at me, her eyes brown, whispering truth.

"Don't" I begged, as I felt everything start to crumble away from me. My heart swayed in my chest, looping the loop and I couldn't even close my eyes to shut it all out. The words and texts bounced in my head, and all I could feel was the warmth of her breath, and the touch of her skin…All I could feel. All I could feel –

"Is my conclusion correct?" The voice was formal, but it was no longer so cold.

"Yes…" I whispered, and I knew then that everything shifted, and I would be running along after it, struggling to adapt.

"Can we be like it was?" 

Texas. She had been born in Texas. All Gods came from Texas. My babbling mind knew that wasn't right, but I couldn't quite grasp hold.

"I'm…I'm not sure we can"

"Can we be the new adaptation?" Her finger traced the edge of my jawline. "I think I'd like that"

"I…"

God, everything was moving so fast and I was frozen in a void. 

I couldn't move, all I could see was…her….pressed against me, her warm body against my chest, the light in her eyes, the familiar thoughts and kindness. Yet, there, the new perceiving wonder and all consuming, impressive arrogance. I admired her. I admired them both. But there was no true distinction anymore.

Pressing my lips to hers was a thousand fallacies and a thousand victories, all dripping like jewels in a shrine. She tasted…she tasted like Fred, but tasted like Illyria. She responded with youth, but with an ancient will, and I was kissing poisoned gold but couldn't stop. 

I pulled her closer, tighter, letting my hands move across this new ancient body, foreign and yet known, letting my emotions rule, pulling me into ruin. She responded in kind, and each second passed like an eternity as my thoughts ceased to be and I simply felt.

I didn't know what I was feeling, but I was no longer dead.

She pulled away as I did, breaking off like familiar lovers, but I couldn't smile. I couldn't relax, I was trembling and I stepped back.

Illyria licked her bottom lip thoughtfully, and regarded me, head on one side.

"You still try to deny how you feel" She observed.

I felt broken and furious and choked by smoke.

"It is interesting"

My skin chilled, turning clammy and sick. My palms felt like they would slough free from my skeleton, and I felt her taste worm her way into my mind, straggling poisons slipping from my burning lips.

"Did you get what you needed from that experience?" I managed to get out, words barely forming, my lungs not providing enough air.

"Yes" She replied with the faintest hint of a smile. "It was most informative"

My mouth moved, and all I wanted to do was fall apart and expose my remains to the skies.

"Don't…Don't do it again"

"As you desire, I will comply"

The undercurrents were stronger, and my office, the books, all jiggled and laughed at my failure.

"Get out" I whispered, but it was no longer a command. It was a plead. I was begging her.

"I shall"

"GETOUT!" And this time I screamed it so loud, that I felt my mind splinter and my heart crack and the scream wasn't enough to obliterate the pain or the fear, though I wished it to, I wished it. It wasn't happening, but I wanted everything to go back and I knew it wouldn't, and it was all spinning around and her...she hurt so much -

She left, making no sound. All traces of Fred were once again buried because she was afraid of the light.


	6. Between The Dark and the Light

Disclaimer: Nope, not mine, but it was a pleasure to borrow them.

* * *

And now I realise where we stand; how she is destroying me and I destroy her. We are each other's fury, each other's nemesis, and we are each other's lives. We are strangely dependant. 

I am her slave, but also her tutor, and her patron.

As she is mine.

I move from where she left me, going to my desk and pulling from the drawer a shotgun, which I load quickly and efficiently. I place a pen in my shirt pocket.

Call to action comes through the wireless. I must progress, I must achieve, I must face it down and bring about the light, and place my self in her dark. 

We are incompatible, and yet we are bound.

And dear god, I sound like her. I really am losing my mind.

She is my Fred. She can be my Fred, and I want that. But simultaneously she isn't. She is Illyria. I can't do this…I can't live through anymore lies.

This is the one thing I cannot let myself become.

"Wesley".

Ah, see, she hasn't gone, she has merely been waiting outside, and now stands in the doorway, neither in the room nor out. How very metaphorical.

I gesture at her with the shotgun, but she does not move.

"You are confused" She states… I look at her, really look at her, studying everything she is, everything that lives beneath, and everything that was just starting to emerge into the light.

"As are you".

"Do you love me?" It has no underlying desire for one answer over the other. She is a God, and does not understand requiesited love, only worship.

"I love you both" I abruptly realise. Concealing the truth only leads to more pain.

"Is that adaptation?"

"Possibly. Or insanity" I muse.

"And that is what you advised for me?"

"Yes".

"It is still a human attribute"

"I am human"

She frowned, perplexity marring her beautiful face.

"But I am not".

"No".

My mind spun a little, but the ground felt more stable. I could see again. She was destroying me, because I needed to be created anew. I wouldn't make it any other way. Perhaps I had been wrong about her. Wrong, yet again.

"When the earth is destroyed, will you still love me?"

"I will always love you" I respond, and the words are treacle, both sweet and sickly.

"Then perhaps, one day, my experiences will be more than informative. Perhaps, one day, I will feel and understand"

I dropped the shotgun to the floor, but it struck a book and its fall was broken. It lay, prostrated, a dumb shell or machine.

"I was going to kill you" I tell her. 

"I am aware"

"I thought that the way you make me feel was wrong, that it was sick and unnatural. I didn't think I could live like that, I couldn't let you do that to me"

"But now you perceive that it isn't so."

"It's called adapting" I say honestly. 

And then she gave a smile, a smile that was not Fred, not Illyria but some land in between.

"I understand"

"You do?" 

"Yes" 

Her next words came gently, with thought. 

"And I think, perhaps, you should find me a name"


End file.
